Chapter 5
“This is me,” Willa said, interrupting the Lyft driver’s winding tale about how she had “released” 40 pounds from her body and now had the energy of a young antelope, thanks to a regimen of essential oils, apple cider vinegar, and protein shakes that were on sale right now and right now only.
“Oh great, just give me your email address and I’ll send you the information,” the driver said. “So many people are losing so much weight and —”
“Sure thing,” Willa slurred, shutting the door and walking up her front steps.
She punched in the code to the door lock, grateful she didn’t have to fumble through her janitor-sized set of keys to get into the house, and carefully clicked the door closed. Willa pictured the dog in a floral housecoat, stewing in the dark in a La-Z-Boy chair and snapping on a light to catch Willa coming home past curfew. But Chicken just sighed and curled up on the couch, tucking her nose under her butt.
Willa untangled herself from her cross-body bag and opened the fridge, pulling out a Tupperware of days-old mac and cheese, and shoveled it into her mouth with her fingers.
“What time is it?” Pete asked, suddenly standing behind her in a T-shirt and boxers, squinting without his glasses.
“I don’t know,” she mumbled, her mouth full of cold Kraft Dinner.
He looked at the microwave display. “It’s 2:30 a.m. Wow.” Then: “Are you drunk?”
“No. Of course not,” she said, swallowing. “Go to sleep.”
He absently scratched himself, then padded back to bed.
It had been a while since this kind of scene had played out for Willa and Pete. Her ability to drink was legendary in college and the post-mortems on Mondays with Lynn at work had always centered on the bar crawl Willa barfed on that weekend, or the fat DJ she’d hooked up with by mistake. But it had been about five years since Willa had come home drunk.
That time, she overdid it at The Local on trivia night, telling acquaintances it was OK to leave her behind. She’d sat at the bar, drinking Sweetwater 420 alone until 3 a.m., then stumbled down a seedy stretch of Ponce de Leon Avenue before seeing what, in Atlanta, was truly a unicorn: A cab, trolling the streets, stopping to pick her up.
Pete had been really worried. So, ever since then, she’d kept her drinking pretty light; it just wasn’t worth the resulting shame, hangxiety, and potential for marital conflict.
But tonight, with the FitFams team, Willa didn’t hit the shut-off switch after one drink. She’d somehow forgotten how to say, “No thanks, I’m good,” instead choosing to keep close pace with the 20- and 30-somethings at the table. Their wide-eyed interest in her life — Kids! Husband! Career! House! Wow! — and their admiration of all she had accomplished felt so good. It was like a warm hug for her inner child, the one who was evaluated at age four and crowned a genius, even as the psychologist noted Willa’s “tendency toward distraction” and “she keeps asking about lunch.” That child, and the teen and adult she became, never quite lived up to her parents’ expectations, Potential with a capital P.
At that table in the bar, Willa talked about flipping a golf cart at a course in New Jersey (no serious injuries) and nannying for a six-year-old demon who said, “my parents pay you to do what I want” (just injuries to her ego). She talked about how, as a teenager, she’d fallen asleep on the train to New York City, dressed in a skirt for the INXS concert at Madison Square Garden, and woke to find that the man next to her had put his left hand on her bare thigh. Before she could process what had happened, he lifted his hand off of her lap. He was wearing a gold wedding band, and he never looked away from the Time Magazine he was reading.
Willa also shared the story of the time she got arrested, after she and two friends walked home from a high school party with a 12-pack of Bud Light in her backpack and made a pit stop at the community pool, scaling the fence and flinging themselves off the high-dive until their soggy celebration was broken up by the cops.
The coaches laughed when Willa described how clever she’d been, asking the police to pull over so she could “throw up,” and how she’d made dramatic retching sounds to cover up the fact that she was hiding her backpack of contraband in the bushes. The cops didn’t notice at first but later retrieved the bag and proudly returned it without the beer inside. Thankfully they hadn’t found her fake ID in an interior pocket.
Tara and the coaches nearly broke into applause. Jem smiled softly. She seemed to be watching Dee for permission to laugh. When Ashley suggested they sop up some of the alcohol with baked ricotta and blistered shishito peppers, Dee dismissed the idea.
She mostly just listened, asking a prying question here or there, and ordering round after round of drinks. It occurred to Willa that there was something familiar here, maybe something she’d seen in a documentary about Scientology, where auditors would interview members and collect their secrets for future use. But that thought was quickly wiped away by the next round of shots.
Willa felt like a shiny thing among shiny things, so she ignored the nagging fact that her depression medication doubled the effects of alcohol and exponentially raised the chances of blacking out. Thankfully, last call was 2 a.m., and she got out of the bar before going entirely over that line.
Back at home, she licked her fingers and put the empty Tupperware in the sink. Time to slam a glass of water, take a B vitamin, and crash into bed.
Training was supposed to begin, in earnest, in about six hours.